In recent years, with the widespread use of digital cameras, photographs have been frequently dealt with in the form of image data. With this trend, it has become common to enjoy photographs in the following two ways. The first one is the conventional way that people view developed photographs. The second one is the new way that people causes an image display device to display thereon photographs stored in the form of image data. Further, a technique is known that causes a server device to store image data of photographs therein so that a plurality of users can view via a network the photographs stored in the server device.
Image data of photographs taken by a camera are stored in a server device after the image data are processed and edited by an image editing application which is provided in a personal computer or the like, as appropriate. However, image data captured by, for example, an image capturing device (e.g. camera-equipped mobile telephone) which is not provided with an image editing application are directly uploaded to and stored in a server device in the form of unedited image data.
In this case, a user who views image data stored in the server device needs to perform editing on each set of image data every time he/she views the image data. This is burdensome for the user who views the image data.
In view of this, it is considered that the server device performs editing on the image data. For example, Patent document 1 (Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 278876/2002 (Tokukai 2002-278876; published on Sep. 27, 2002)) discloses the technique in which upon receipt of captured image information from the user, a server device, which is provided with an application for image data editing and in which a predetermined editing procedure is registered, automatically edits the image data.
However, the technique of Patent document 1 has the problem that since the server device performs image data editing, load placed on the server device increases and a response speed of the server device decreases.
In addition, the technique of Patent document 1 has the problem that the editing is not always performed in a manner that the viewer wants since the server device performs the automatic editing process according to the registered predetermined editing procedure.
Suppose, for example, there is a case where viewers want to view a group photograph in which their children appear. In this case, sections which the viewers want to zoom in are different because each of the viewers zooms in on a section of the group photograph where his/her child appears. Regardless of the viewers' desire, the automatic editing is performed. Note that each viewer can download the image from the server device to a terminal device to process and edit the downloaded image so that the image is displayed in a manner that the viewer wants. In this case, the image data stored in the server device is in an original form before processed or edited by the terminal device. That is why the image data needs to be processed or edited afresh when the image data is viewed.